New 995 Owner - Have a Couple of Questions...

[defcon2]

Since this is my first radar detector and I am new to the board, I have a couple questions.

I live in south florida (ft. lauderdale area) and was curious if I should disable X band completely. I read on another post that in Florida LEO/Troopers cannot issue tickets using X band. So what would be the point of having it on besides falsing?

My other question would be concerning POP and SWS. Can anyone confirm if POP is used down in south Florida and are there any advantages of having it enabled or disabled? Has anyone here ever had a SWS notification? Seems like a cool feature but I have yet to get one.

I do have a couple remarks about being a first time owner of a radar detector. IMHO the cost for a 995 vs. the K falses when driving by some supermarkets or gas stations seems quite boggling to me. For the heavy price tag of higher end model detectors, it should be able to reject every false alert.

I wonder if a cheaper model would have been just as good.....

None the less, I am happy to be here and appreciate all the knowledge in the forum!

[jimbonzzz]

I live in south florida (ft. lauderdale area) and was curious if I should disable X band completely. I read on another post that in Florida LEO/Troopers cannot issue tickets using X band. So what would be the point of having it on besides falsing?

I believe that is correct, I think I even looked it up before: No X-Band in Florida. Maybe a Florida person will confirm...

My other question would be concerning POP and SWS. Can anyone confirm if POP is used down in south Florida and are there any advantages of having it enabled or disabled? Has anyone here ever had a SWS notification? Seems like a cool feature but I have yet to get one.

There's no question that there are radar units in Florida that normally have the POP feature. But, it is very possible that these units might not have the POP feature enabled. I posted about this before, here's an excerpt from one manual:



Note the "Not present in Florida units"...
What implications this might have I'm not exactly sure. There might be some kind of legal restriction to using POP in Florida, some have speculated that Florida might not allow POP because there is no doppler audio.

As for SWS, the system never really gained too much popularity, the best evidence is that "Some 200 transmitters are in use in 33 states". So you might get the occasional alert, but most people don't even bother with it. I recommend leaving it turned off.

I do have a couple remarks about being a first time owner of a radar detector. IMHO the cost for a 995 vs. the K falses when driving by some supermarkets or gas stations seems quite boggling to me. For the heavy price tag of higher end model detectors, it should be able to reject every false alert.

Unfortunately, the radar signals from microwave motion sensors are electronically identical to police radar . So, there is no way to suppress these alerts completely, and there is no way to even reduce these false alerts, without also potentially hurting your protection against real police radar. The filtering modes of most detectors attempt to reject some of these by reducing sensitivity etc. For many people the reduced protection is a small risk they are willing to take in order to reduce the false alerts.

Jim

[defcon2]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me Jimbonzz! I tell you, this place rocks as far as the knowledge that is available.

I will go ahead and disable the SWS.

I will try to look into this more into if Florida LEO use X and POP. I want to be certain.

I am assuming that K and Ka are the most popular... My 995 went bezerk on K band when approaching a stand alone radar along the road that flashes your speed. So it is working :-)

I hope you had a safe and happy new year!!!

[KaPro]

defcon,
Welcome to the board!! You have a very good rd. If you are in doubt (x band), leave it on for a long enough period of time so you can be absolutely certain that none is used in your area. The 995 has pretty good filtering and easy muting features so x band falses should not be too nagging. Hope this helps, Scott

[RadarRick]

Welcome defcon2 Enjoy your quality Bel product as it will serve you well for many years to come :wink:
RR